How Far We've Come in RC - Where are We Going?

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Wow that looks very cool and I love vintage commercials. Mine was a handheld one...like a flashlight with a sturdy wire and when you flipped the switch, the propellers lifted the helicopter and you guided it with the wire. Similar concept
 
I had a P-51 Cox tether plane. I never quite got the hang of tilting and twisting that plastic controller very well, but did manage to keep it in the air a few times before it was repeatedly crashed beyond all recognition. I still remember the way that thing smelled when it fired up and the noise it made. Good times.
 
I had a P-51 Cox tether plane. I never quite got the hang of tilting and twisting that plastic controller very well, but did manage to keep it in the air a few times before it was repeatedly crashed beyond all recognition. I still remember the way that thing smelled when it fired up and the noise it made. Good times.
I still remember that smell as well. It was something kinda special every time we flew ours. We used to fly til we got dizzy.
 
So who here remembers having a wired RC as a kid? Mine weren't quite this old, but this is a pic I just stumbled across that brought up a ton of memories.
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Share your memories of RC as a kid. And what do you think we will see next?

For me personally, I have mentioned it began with my father building RC planes in the early 80's, but seeing the pic above made me realize it actually began way before then. We had model rockets, the Cox tethered planes, and Cox powered dragsters years before that. Who here had Stompers?
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It's amazing what a simple picture can do with regards to your memory. I had completely forgotton about a lot of these. But brief glimpses of the times we were playing with stuff like this, and images of the actual toys, are flooding back right now. So I thought I would share some of these thoughts here.

All this thinking about the past got me wondering - What will my son remember? And what will he be looking back on as relics of a hobby he loved as a child? Will RC still be a thing? And what hobby or love in the future will he think back on and say "It all began with RC cars". It's pretty vague thinking what could be the next evolution of this hobby and those who partake in it.
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I am confident 3D printing will continue to play a bigger role in manufacturing. And that to me is both exciting and scary at the same time. What will happen when kids grow up and don't work with their hands, except to move a mouse and punch some keys on a keyboard?

Wait a minute! Do you see what I did there? There likely won't even be a mouse and a keyboard! Will they still have Transmitters at all? We went from having to get up and walk to the TV and turn the channel, to being able to talk to the TV or talk some invisible assistant into turning the channel for us. All within 40 years time.

Share your thoughts.
Going back to WW2 the Brits had wired mini tanks used to clear mine fields and then there were the early RPV target drones for Military gunner target practise training. Wireless- look up Nikola Tesla's 19th century RC BOAT! My first RC was a replica BIG GUFF with a radio tube transmitter and receiver; one channel with an electromagnetic ESCAPEMENT. If you ran out of turns on the escapement rubber band, you lost control, and your plane just flew away ! ( https://www.rfcafe.com/references/r...d-model-airplane-radio-news-february-1939.htm ).
 
Not sure where RC in general is going but I know where I'm going. I'm going to own a Kraken Vekta.5 one of these days.
 
I had the Cox P51 tether plane as my first "RC" vehicle, and my father and grandfather had these big tether planes that they gave to me, but I never got them working. I think I was just 10 when I got them. About the same age my father bought me my first shotgun, lol. This was late 70's.
 
Isnt this the same people that built the 1/3RD scale truck, the Mammuth Rewarron, that never got sold and disappeared from their site? https://www.gadgetking.com/2017/04/20/13-scale-rc-truck-the-mammuth-rewarron/
This is my first time hearing of them. I dont think it will sell, yet atleast. It would not surprise me if they go this route one day because lets face it we are being pushed to a lazy and tech infested society. People seem to lack the tuning skills we once had.
 
I had this as youngster…just retrieved it from moms attic today …I believe it’s from 1975 which would’ve made me 7yrs old 😳
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What is next is a great ? Never had the wired RCs but do remember them. At this point can only get bigger and faster one would think. Some will do a VR RC car or truck..we all can only hope for better stock plastic parts 😉🤔👍👍🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
In the near future, YES VR/FPV with hand-held transmitter replaced by a realistic driving "cockpit". Next will be Nikola Tesla's wireless power tech. A Tesla Coil Generator will produce the electricity which you only need to pick out of the air with a low powered receiver in your RPV. Oh, and cheap, easy to fabricate, safe, reliable, 100 percent efficient electrical materials ( i.e. SUPERCONDUCTORS ).
 
In the near future, YES VR/FPV with hand-held transmitter replaced by a realistic driving "cockpit". Next will be Nikola Tesla's wireless power tech. A Tesla Coil Generator will produce the electricity which you only need to pick out of the air with a low powered receiver in your RPV. Oh, and cheap, easy to fabricate, safe, reliable, 100 percent efficient electrical materials ( i.e. SUPERCONDUCTORS ).
I agree. But the last guy I saw playing with Tesla's wireless power technology got a visit from the Canadian government. He had some cool vids out years ago. He was floating bowling balls in the air like they were under some sort of witchcraft or something.
 
Aw Man this is right up my alley being a 70's 80's kid when R/C was first becoming really accessible to the masses.. I had a few wired cars that would turn in reverse, then some Radio Shack R/C ones that did the same thing.. I always built static model cars as a really small kid like 6-10 yrs old, so like anybody who did that and had an imagination , "the dream" was to make the static models come to life, so when the mid 80's hit and department stores were starting to carry things like the Tyco Turbo hopper or the Nikko Turbo panther R/C just exploded.. As to where we are heading , well, things are becoming more "hobby" oriented again for those who like that , like myself.. I like to design /build/ make things , not buy them. So modern things like 3d printers and desk top routers and desktop lathes have changed how I go about things now days for sure, but its still the build I enjoy.. so a few years back it kinda dawned on me that for smaller scales at least , the means of self production are readily available at this point.. so instead of spending a couple hundred on a RTR , or kit I started spending a couple hundred on machines that could make as many toy cars as I desired .. So yeah thats been more my focus for quite some time is "spreading the word" that for the smaller scales the means of production is becoming completely "decentralized" if you will.. I can now spend $5 buying the files for a car , and self supply just about every part on it that is made from plastic.. This scares the hell out of people in the industry that see whats coming.. I can build the equivalent of a $350 brushless mini-z RTR for well under $100 and thats paying retail for all the purchased bits like radio , esc, motor.. .. the plastics for a 1/24 car weigh in at just over 100 grams .. I can print off 19 full sets of plastics on 1 $20- $25 spool of standard old PLA+ , and not need any thing more than a bottom of the barrel original ender 3 to do it with... As a hobbyist , this is freaking GREAT!! If I can draw it , I can make it.. as a manufacturer of R/c goods?? Well for the time being 1/10 and larger scales still require manufacturing processes and materials that are kind of pricey, but at the current rate that tech advances, Give that 3-5 years and a machine to run some reinforced nylon/polycarbonate dependably wont cost as much as a used car.. For us tinkerers and bashers this is all GREAT news..
 
In the near future, the latest new thing will be controlling land vehicles via headset and hand motions as your gripping a steering wheel, the buggies will began to look like a Tyco Tantrum and old late 90s early 2000s Nikko Dictator, Radio Shack Turbo Jet, I'm saying a jet styled fuselage, cockpit with wings, and wack sized tires, probably be powered by neo super magnets driving some sort of new tech power thingy replacing motors regenerative braking, and there is only one gender...

Yup, sounds ga..great.
 
As for range, I am fine with what we have now for our cars. I can drive farther than I can see with the awfulest of Chinese offerings, and that becomes a shorter distance every day. Pretty soon the old cheap FM transmitters will seem to be way over-engineered for my eyesight 😜

And as far as the FPV stuff, the government is not content with civilians having any kind of flying devices, and I believe they will slowly take away freedoms of people until the only place we can fly them is a tiny spec of land in the middle of Kansas off I-70. Oh, and mind the encroachment of the endless line of grass on fire heading your way, being driven by the wind. And the flaming tumbleweeds which are moving at speeds that are often seen outrunning cops in a high speed chase.

This alone makes me think the future tech we see in the RC world may start to slow down if the governments have their way. RC fanatics of the aerial nature were marveled by technology that allowed us to build drones that could fly many miles away from us. And you can still build them and buy them. You can fly DJI drones for miles away from you. But that is now illegal in a lot of places. So before long, they won't need to add that kinda range. That's like "Reverse Technology of the 2nd kind".

And before long (if they haven't already started the process), the electronics will likely be required by law to shut down once they are out of your line of sight, or won't be allowed through customs. Just speculating here mind you, and yes I am reaching, but something like this could affect a lot of things in this hobby. Not just drones, in the very near future.

I find it kinda tragic that we finally reached a point where we could see so much of the world through the help of RC and FPV technology, and before long they could take it all away. They are doing it slowly, right before our eyes. And most people don't see it. And without advancements in our hobby, the lack of joy will be leaving my kiddo to find better entertainment staring at a screen in his hand versus going outside and driving an RC car. Because by law maybe it can't be more than 50 feet from you traveling at a maximum allowed speed of a whopping 15mph.

Or maybe we will all have rocket ships!
The debate will always rage on. I don’t necessarily believe that They take our freedoms just for grins, at least not in this case. I believe rapidly advancing tech creates some pretty crazy unintended consequences. What if a noob with more money than brains or experience lost sight of his new giant scale drone and inadvertently crossed into airspace loaded with passenger air traffic? We have the FAA for a reason. Remember when all of a sudden GPS started getting crazy accurate and reliable a few years ago? Gov had to almost immediately limit the tech so Joe Piglet couldn’t use it as a hyper accurate bomb delivery/targeting system. As for the hobby, who knows? It’s astounding how far things have advanced in so little time. Civilization was entirely analog not too long ago. It really is crazy reflecting on the speed of advancement in the last 50 years.
 
The debate will always rage on. I don’t necessarily believe that They take our freedoms just for grins, at least not in this case. I believe rapidly advancing tech creates some pretty crazy unintended consequences. What if a noob with more money than brains or experience lost sight of his new giant scale drone and inadvertently crossed into airspace loaded with passenger air traffic? We have the FAA for a reason. Remember when all of a sudden GPS started getting crazy accurate and reliable a few years ago? Gov had to almost immediately limit the tech so Joe Piglet couldn’t use it as a hyper accurate bomb delivery/targeting system. As for the hobby, who knows? It’s astounding how far things have advanced in so little time. Civilization was entirely analog not too long ago. It really is crazy reflecting on the speed of advancement in the last 50 years.
Yeah, I may have been under some form of influence when I wrote that 😉 But I had just been reading up on some of the newest drone laws. And I totally get the reason for them. I have a cousin who has a couple video drones, and my first thought was - oh gawd no... not him LOL. Just kidding of course ;) But my cousin just didn't put me in mind of the kinda person that would be piloting a drone around. But he has put out some really cool footage with it in an area here that can be pretty boring. But you do see videos of idiots on Youtube that go out of their way to push the laws to their limits, just to get on the nerves of the authorities. Those kinda people need to be ejected into space. Which by the way, we need that technology - an Earth eject button.

My son just got an Oculus Quest 2 here at my place, and his mom got him one as well. Damn spoiled kid. But I plan to get him into FPV race drones when he gets old enough. I just hope by then we can still fly the ones I have. Come to think of it, the one I built is now illegal I believe 🤔
 

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